To be a member of Parliament was in those days, of course, a more exacting claim upon one’s time and convenience than it is now. The meaningless tyranny of tradition still made it impossible to be represented in any circumstances by a proxy, and no effort had been made to relieve the burden of legislation except the institution, once a week, of “voting night”: the second and third readings of all bills, which had previously been liable to surprise the House at any odd moment, were now restricted to Wednesday evening, between the hours of nine and eleven. Sunday was, I believe, the day originally chosen, but it was found that this would interfere with too many private engagements. But the duty of presence in person still hung about our necks; and it is with some pride that I can boast never to have missed a voting night during the six years of my experience as a representative of the nation. On the other side, it must be admitted that the writing of a letter to the newspapers every month was then not a duty, but only an honourable understanding. Still, it will easily be conceived how the burdens of my new dignity interfered with the leisure of my quiet life at Greylands.

Every morning a large crate would arrive, containing the records of all the speeches made in the House the previous day. I always made a point of having them all turned on; and if I were called away from the room to interview the cook or for some similar purpose I would always leave Porstock behind me to hear what was said and to report on anything which had struck him: if this seemed sufficiently important, the dictaphone would have to be reversed till the important passage was reached again. Then, if I were down to speak myself the next day, I would have to shut myself up for an hour or so in the dictaphone room, till a perfect record could be secured. Even a question that had to be asked would be a matter of anxious care. I cannot imagine how the Ministers of those days can have found time for all their engagements, when questions had to be answered into the dictaphone, before the invention of the present mechanical process. Really, we are spoilt nowadays!

Nor were the incidental duties of a Member of Parliament inconsiderable. Now I would be writing my autograph in the prizes to be distributed at my old school; now I would be at the telephone opening a bazaar; now I would be trudging out, in all weathers, to the wireless installation at the back of the house to unveil a statue, to lay a foundation-stone, or (for I was still known as a sportswoman) to kick off at some Manchester football match. Now and again my secretaries would come in to consult me as to how they were to answer some troublesome constituent, whose letter they did not feel capable of answering on their own responsibility. There were Committees, too, of the House, one of them (the Kitchen Committee) actually demanding my personal presence. I also became, as was natural, directress of a good many companies, and it became necessary to build on a board-room at Greylands in which to entertain their Committees.

But, although the life of an M.P. was already a busy one, it was not even then an eventful one. Day followed day, and the press of business which had at first seemed so strange and so insupportable fell, as things will, under the enchantment of routine. But there was one period, in the spring of 1956, when the calm waters of Party politics were suddenly disturbed, and that through my agency. The “duodecimal crisis” which was a matter of so much talk and notoriety at the time, is almost forgotten nowadays, and I hope I shall be pardoned for dealing with it somewhat fully, since I was myself the centre of the storm.

The facts were, briefly, as follows. In 1929 the Conservative Government appointed a Commission to enquire into the possibility of introducing into England the decimal system of coinage, weights, measures, etc. Its sittings were interrupted by the accession of the Labour Government in the early thirties, which, among its first and most unpopular actions, drastically cut down the expenses allowed to the members of Royal Commissions. “It comes to this,” said Professor Drywater of Aberdeen, “that if I want to serve my country I shall have to serve it at my own expense.” Under the Independent Government the Commissions were revived, but little interest was shown in this particular enquiry. It was when the Conservatives returned to power in ’44 that the stimulus of public interest made the Commissioners redouble their efforts, and in less than ten years they had produced a series of recommendations which are still on record^[10]. The shilling was only to count ten pennies, the half-sovereign and the “fiver” being retained at their present value in shillings as the units of gold coinage. There were to be ten inches to the foot, three and a third feet to the yard, and a thousand yards to the mile. The hundredweight would contain its exact 100 pounds, and the ton would weigh twenty-five hundredweight, or a hundred quarters—and so on. The scruple, the noggin, the chaldron, the hogshead, the gill, the pipe, and the rod, pole or perch disappeared altogether.

Mr. Holroyd was not of that narrow, factious spirit which would refuse to adopt a measure because that measure had been first suggested by an opponent. It was characteristic of the man that, when he was elevated to the peerage, he selected Fas est et ab Hoste Doceri for his family motto. The programme was adopted, not in the form of a private member’s Bill, but with the full backing of the Front Bench. The whole weight of the Tory opposition was immediately thrown into the scale against it. Readers of Punch will remember the cartoon of Lord Hopedale defending, in classical costume, the walls of Troy Weight against a serried rank of circular shields. The issue was a critical one; the battle was to be fought, not on the merits of the case, but as a test of Party strength. The by-elections had, for some time, been looking ominous; urgent “whips” were broadcasted by the Mechanics of either party; the Tories appealed to popular prejudice by asserting that they were fighting for the tankards of old England; and in many constituencies, it is believed, the whole proposal was obscurely identified with some measure of Temperance reform.

In an evil hour for my party, I had studied (it will be remembered) the Theory of Statistics at Oxford, and had sat at the feet of that erratic genius, Arthur Tonks. It was his favourite thesis that the whole civilized world was groaning under what he called “the decimal illusion.” Through a disastrous legacy of barbarism, he would tell us, we had all agreed to fix our “round number,” after which we started out on “double figures,” at the number of fingers with which Providence had endowed us. “Ladies,” he would tell us, “we are not barbarians, and we do not count on our fingers.” By his way of it, the multiple of three and four, which we have thrust on, as “twelve,” into the teens, ought to have been the round number of our calculations. He had therefore composed a system of counting of his own, which ran “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, tonk, tink, ten,” and was printed for short as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, *, &, 10. By this system, which at Oxford he always hoped to see universally adopted, and later, in his retirement, came to believe had actually been universally adopted, the whole business of calculation was to be infinitely simplified. His was the passion of a fanatic: he would date a letter, not “Sept. 22,” but as “Sept. 1*” (pronounced “tonkteen”), or tell you that the Battle of Waterloo had been fought in A.D. 1513, or announce his nine-thirty lecture as due to begin at “tink twenty-six.”

How saddening a feature it is of that strange process we call “education,” that while we are still in the pupil’s status we laugh at our tutors and make fun of their pet fads, and yet in later life, when those tutors are dead and can no longer accept our tardy homage, come back to the fads we once derided and make them our own! In this matter of coinage reform, I was determined that we would have no half-measures: we would not blunderingly imitate the clumsy practice of Continental nations. If we were to have reform at all, we would have reform on the right lines; “tonk” and “tink” should find their way into every schoolboy’s arithmetic book. If there were to be ten pennies to the shilling, then a penny should be change for tinkpence, and twopence should be change for tonkpence: if we were to have ten inches to the foot, then an inch short should be tink inches and two inches short should be tonk inches. I wrote a letter expounding and defending this principle to all the daily papers, all of which refused to print it, except the Manchester Guardian, which had little circulation in the metropolis. However, I was in a position to snap my finger at the dailies: Juliet Savage was now editing the Spectator, and she was at one with me in my present determination. Together we organized a violent campaign, reviving as we did so delightful memories of the Bilston Hall Rocket in early days. Poor Miss Montrose, long since gone to her rest, how she must have felt for Mr. Holroyd, attacked by the same two venomous pens that had once marred the peace of her quiet seminary!

My protest, which I had not communicated before to any of my Parliamentary colleagues, took the political world by surprise. The first I heard of it was a letter from Sir Hubert Gunter, the Chief Mechanic of the Democratic Party:

I hope none of our people have been worrying you about your very interesting letter to the “Spectator,” which I have not yet had time to read. The truth is, a silly report has grown up to the effect that you intended, not merely to abstain from voting on the Weights and Measures Bill, but to associate yourself with the Opposition. I hate troubling you, but you know what an awkward moment it is for many of us—a short letter to the papers denying the imputation would, we all feel, have a good effect. I enclose a draft of such a letter for your signature, and beg to remain,

My reply to this letter was one which was intended to leave my meaning open to no possible doubt:

I can quite understand that my letter, appealing, as it does, primarily to the mathematician, should have failed to arouse your curiosity. But I am sorry to say that you have not been in any way misinformed as to the scope of my opposition. The subject is one on which I feel very strongly, and I am prepared, if necessary, to jeopardize my political career by seeking re-election in the interests of whatever party seems to me to represent most faithfully the highest aspirations of our great country.

This letter drew a reply, not from Sir Hubert, but from a far more responsible quarter. Mr. Holroyd was absent at this time, conducting some very important negotiations in the South of France, and Lord Brede, who led the Party in the Lords, was in charge of certain matters of vital urgency in California. But it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer herself who continued the attack:

We know one another well enough for me to confess at once that I don’t like your scheme of playing billy with the multiplication table: my job is hard enough, without having to go to school again and do my sums afresh. But you also know me well enough to know that I should not let such merely personal considerations weigh with me if I felt that your proposal could be dealt with on its own merits, as a contribution to that advancement of the human genius which we all have at heart.

But you will excuse my saying that this proposal of yours does not stop short at that. It is not content to revolutionize the whole of our arithmetical method. It is a challenge to the Government, thrown down at a most anxious moment. It amounts to a calling in question of that whole delicate system of Party Government by which the affairs of the nation have for centuries been conducted. If a private member is to adopt a line of her own, in complete disregard of the programme for which his Majesty’s Government stands, you must see for yourself what a dangerous precedent will be set up. Such a principle will undermine that whole spirit of loyal co-operation and esprit de corps to which Ministers have to look for their support in matters of urgent national moment. I am sure that you are sufficiently in sympathy with us on more important subjects, such as the Protection of the Hottentot Industries and the Improvement of London, to feel that no disagreement over points of detail ought to prevent us pulling together shoulder to shoulder. As a matter of personal friendship, I need not remind you how prejudicial an effect your present attitude might have upon your chances of obtaining a coupon should you seek election in the Democrat interest in future Parliaments.

What lovely weather we are having!

I have mislaid somehow the copy of the letter which I wrote in answer to this, but it cannot have been a very satisfactory one, for almost immediately afterwards my operator was rung up in the middle of the night to take a message from Lord Brede. He had, I fancy, not been put in full possession of the facts, but merely asked to send me a strong remonstrance which would make me repent of the lone hand I was playing:

Deeply appreciate sincerity of motives which have contributed difficult situation. Impossible expect agreement great fundamental principles ensure seeing eye to eye matters of detailed application. But higher considerations than those mere party surely bid sink private differences co-operate generously in great cause. Implore you take no steps likely to jeopardize harmony Ministerial camp during crisis fraught grave national peril. No one more ready than Prime Minister or self to give full weight any criticisms administration when business Empire permits return. Know can depend strong personal loyalty already evinced hundred unforgettable instances during past years. Spirit of Gladstone not dead yet. ac.ac.ac. Brede.

But I had not yet reached the zenith of my notoriety; my revolt was actually to evoke a personal appeal from Mr. Holroyd himself! I confess that I felt a twinge of something like remorse when I realized that the great man, in the midst of his multitudinous affairs, had found time to write with his own hand (so far as the signature was concerned) to one whom he must have regarded as an erring disciple:

I am sure you will not think me intrusive if I write to congratulate you most warmly on the lucid exposition you have given in the “Spectator” of a most intricate problem, which has always had great interest for me. The daily papers out here all had translations of it—I am afraid it will be a long time before our Press rivals that of the French in its appreciation of scientific technicalities. If only I had known earlier that you felt so strongly on the matter, it might have had a profound influence upon the drafting of the legislative proposal which now lies on the table of the House of Commons. Certainly, if it had happened a few years earlier, your claim to be appointed a member of the Royal Commission could not well have been overlooked.

But facts are facts, and I am afraid that the measure in question must seem to you a very half-hearted solution, which has not grasped the nettle, or plucked the heart out of the controversy. You must think us slow-coaches! Well, you will pardon an old friend of your father’s for saying that you are still young, and the young are always for whole measures—they will not have the wings of aspiration clipped. I know it is asking a great deal of you when we ask you to follow the lagging footsteps of us older men: and yet it is a lesson we all have to learn. I daresay you will remember old Lord Perse? He once said to me a thing I have never forgotten: “If you can’t get all you want, want all you can get.” I quite see that our present proposals can only appear to you in the light of a preliminary instalment of those great changes you would like to see effected. But may we hope they will have your support, if only as an instalment? The country at large, I fear, needs educating before it will greet your own more far-reaching scheme with the consideration, and, I may say, the sympathy it deserves. But, as you well know, “we will not cease from mental strife”: we are pledged to make England a fairer and a happier land than we found it.

Meanwhile, although your woman’s talent for logic makes you see ahead of others, I hope you will allow yourself to be guided in this matter by a man’s intuition. Masculine intuition is so valuable sometimes! Please remember me most kindly to Lord Porstock; he will be back in England by now?

It was, I confess, not without a tear in my eye and a quivering typewriter that I answered this kindly letter as follows:

Thank you very much for your most kind letter, whose complimentary expressions are, I am afraid, far in excess of anything my poor intelligence deserves. I quite understand that the line of action I am adopting is a very unusual one. You, on your side, will understand that I would not be acting in this way if I did not feel deeply about the point at issue. That point is not, as I conceive, merely one of mathematical convenience. It is simply the question whether the constituents in any electoral division are to send a representative to Westminster, or a dummy. If the country wished its political life to be suspended by the sleep of an eternal compromise, it should not have allowed women into Parliament. I have been told from several quarters that the subject of my opposition is unimportant compared with the fact of my opposition; in short, that I am a test case. I believe it, and I am glad of it; it seems to me that the nation is drifting perilously near to the position in which it would be governed by a Cabinet instead of a Parliament.

I need hardly say that the Press was very amusing at my expense, but its comment was not always particularly intelligent. Indeed, the only sensible criticism I remember was a cartoon in which I was represented as an exhibit at a freak-show, with six fingers on each hand. But the greater part of my critics seemed to have entirely missed the point at issue. They all seemed obsessed with the idea, either that I multiplied three by four into ten, or that I multiplied five by two into twelve, or both. The words “tink” and “tonk” naturally caught on with the humorists of the day; indeed, I believe a revue entitled “Tink tonk” was still running at the outbreak of the Great War. Some of my serious critics were even more entertaining, and I was severely reproved by more than one religiously minded correspondent for upsetting the eternal laws of number, ordained for us by a wise Providence when it gave us fingers and toes. But I was not to be moved by any kind of opposition, and the support of Juliet Savage prevented the public from laughing me out of court. In the end, as my readers will probably remember, the situation became so acute that the Prime Minister actually came back from France and held a Round Table Conference at Chequers. For a time it looked as if no modus vivendi could be arrived at, but at last statesmanship triumphed, and a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate the relative merits of decimal and duodecimal numeration, which is still sitting to-day.

I need only mention one other of my public activities, which remains a legitimate boast; it was a Private Member’s Bill, brought forward by myself, that procured the erection of the great statue of Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street. I pointed out that London was now the only European capital which had no statue of the kind, and the plaque on No. 221B Baker Street was a quite inadequate recognition of the famous detective’s services. The question whether he had ever existed did not affect, or ought not to affect, the feelings of veneration with which we regarded him. When the bill passed, I was elected a member of the Committee which was to decide between the various designs sent in. The prevailing taste at the moment was Futuribilism, but none of the artists then in vogue seemed to have treated his subject adequately. Several of them represented the head merely as a square block of stone, on the ground that all attempts to imitate the features in sculpture were a violation of the canons of Art. Another, on the same ground, represented the figure as strictly globular. I am glad to say that it was at my instigation the Committee chose the design sent in by Wrightman, then quite unknown, but destined to become famous as one of the leaders of the neo-classical school in the sixties. The conception is a noble one, and if some have found fault with the pipe as out of keeping with the classical draperies in which the figure is represented, it is not for us to complain. “We must approach Art,” Burstall used to say, “as a goddess demanding a sacrifice; and the victim she asks of us is the Actual.”

Well, the old days of Parliament are dead; and we no longer see St. Stephen’s presenting the appearance it used to present on “voting nights,” when helico after helico landed in the great square outside and legislatress after legislatress passed into the building to record her decision upon the affairs of the nation: when, by a quaint old survival, they used to bow to one another as they passed, while the opposing platforms bore them into the opposing lobbies; or when, on the occasion of some important speech, as many as five hundred auditors would assemble in the dictaphone room, to catch, in awestruck silence, the very tones of a Hopedale or a Holroyd before they passed into the receiver. Those of us who belonged to those older Parliaments will look back with some regret at the pomp and circumstance which used to attend legislation in those days; and perhaps even suspect that some of our modern indifference to political issues is due to the disappearance of that pageantry which is so dear to English hearts. There is still an old-world enchantment that lingers about the House itself: and you might almost fancy that those voiceless figures which sit there now, admirably as the Tussaud family has caught the likenesses of our present-day legislators, were the ghosts of a distant past, when the voice of a Burke would stir his contemporaries to indignation and to endurance, or the receiving funnels vibrated to the delicate soprano of a Pulbrooke.